The patient critical care environment in hospitals is becoming increasingly crowded due to the number of pieces of medical equipment associated with critical care, which pieces of equipment embody various critical care technologies. Specifically, within the critical care environment there is generally located a critical care bed, around which are positioned a ventilator, I.V. pumps, various monitors, and one or more computer terminals for entering patient care data. The numerosity of pieces of equipment spaced about a critical care hospital room and the patient bed results in patient care inefficiency, as a care provider must continually monitor and operate all the pieces of equipment, while such are not advantageously ergonomically arranged.
In addition to the critical care environment being crowded and somewhat cumbersome around which to work, the transfer of the various pieces of equipment along with the patient on the critical care bed from one room to another within the hospital is tedious, time consuming and difficult to manage. One reason is that the critical care bed, and the various technologies associated with the critical care environment, are generally each individually supported on wheeled support structures. Therefore, when transferring the patient from one room to another room, several pieces of wheeled equipment must simultaneously be rolled to the new location. Not only is this task cumbersome, but also it is time consuming. Further, since all the various technologies must be first disconnected from their respective connections to AC power at the wall in the room, the various technologies must either operate on some sort of stand-by scheme during transportation, or must be manually operated. Swift transfer of the various pieces of equipment with the critical care bed from one room to another is mandatory in order to minimize down time on these pieces of equipment yet is made very difficult by the clutter associated with the several individual pieces of equipment.
Use of a ventilator in a critical care context normally requires the use of one or more oxygen and air canisters or bottles, to supply the ventilator with air and oxygen. These bottles are normally placed beside a critical care bed for supplying the ventilator with oxygen and air while the patient is hooked up to the ventilator. During transport of the patient on the bed, with the patient still hooked up to the ventilator, transport of the air and oxygen bottles along with patient, bed and ventilator has presented a problem. One solution which has proved to be unsatisfactory is to simply place the oxygen and air bottles in the bed with the patient for transport with the patient. Such a solution has obvious drawbacks, such as decreasing the effective amount of bed space available for the patient, increasing the likelihood of patient injury upon contacting the bottles and increasing the likelihood of patient care provider injury upon lifting and placing the bottles into the bed.
In a critical care environment the patient can be invasively and/or non-invasively connected to dozens of devices, for example, IV pumps, drainage devices, vital signs monitoring, ventilator and pressure transducers. Doctors often require diagnostic imaging such as x-ray, CT scan, MRI, PET scans, nuclear imaging, and/or invasive procedures such as angiogram, cath lab, and surgery performed upon these patients. These procedures cannot be performed in the patient room, and therefore the patient and all of his or her ancillary devices must be taken to the procedure. In order to transport the critically ill patient and his or her life support devices ancillary items, for example, drug box, oxygen bottles, defibrillator, and transport monitor, must be taken along to support the devices and as emergency precautions. In order to transport all of these devices and items as well as the patient as many as six attendants, including nurses, respiratory therapists, doctors, residents, and transport personnel may be required. And before transport, the aforementioned ancillary equipment items such as drug box, oxygen tanks, ambu bag, portable ventilator, defibrillator, transport monitor, portable suction, IV stands, and the like, which are not kept in the patient room, must be gathered. These items can be stored in several separate locations and may also be misplaced and difficult to locate. Therefore, the gathering, managing and transporting of the aforementioned items has in the past created much difficulty, taxing numerous care providers and expending critical time.